Thank you very much for your comments.
The issue of minimum wage is one we have not done direct research on; however, how it fits into the issue of poverty is one of being a floor of income levels for people. You're quite right that the provinces deal with a larger number of people who may be more directly affected by minimum wage than the federal government does.
The bigger picture, though, is how we ensure that people have opportunity through either education or ensuring businesses can offer progressively better jobs that have better pay rates than even minimum wage can offer to them as well. That would be key to ensuring the business community can offer those jobs that provide far greater salaries and wages and so on.
With regard to the aspect of non-profits and working with NGOs, that is actually one of the keys to how we address the issue of poverty within our communities. Many of the groups that are here today work directly or work with groups that work directly with those who are poverty-stricken for a wide variety of reasons.
The difficulty of having one policy even at the federal level that will meet all those needs across the country is extremely difficult. The needs and obligations in one community or one region may be quite different from somewhere else.
So I would urge the government to try to let local NGOs, non-profits, churches, and community-based groups—that can best deal with that, that have the resources and have the contacts—deal with it, rather than strictly at a federal government level, working cooperatively and essentially removing any road barriers to letting those groups do their job best.